


we are all just trying to be holy

by zeprince



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: High Chaos Corvo Attano, M/M, corvo is a good dad, graphic depictions of SIN, hagfish slime as lube, teague is a terrible overseer, violation of the seven strictures
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 16:58:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4270932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeprince/pseuds/zeprince
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corvo is on the verge of eliminating everything that stands between the Loyalists and their goal, and the only thing Teague Martin can do is violate every single one of the seven strictures. We all make sacrifices for our heroes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we are all just trying to be holy

“ _It’s not that Corvo doesn’t let other people into his room; it’s that no one else wants to go up there._

_It stinks of death and he sits like a vulture. A crow, so be it. Sitting on the nest, waiting until his little white egg hatches into something that looks just like him. Maybe Havelock can’t see it, and Treavor doesn’t want to, but I do. I understand. Every night, Corvo comes back from Dunwall with blood for Miss Emily’s wing._

_He’s oiling a bird of prey.”_

Teague turned his audiograph off and the room went silent.

He stayed still, listening to the muffled sounds of Cecelia walking around in the room next door. She was talking to herself, but he couldn’t tell what she was saying. He reached forward to pluck the audiograph record out from the player, pulling open his jacket to tuck it in next to his breast.

He’d rather hold it as a physical weight. It felt flimsier that way.

Havelock had not yet returned to his room for the night, and Teague enjoyed the minute of introspection it gave him. Corvo would be back from the bridge shortly.

The thing that Teague didn’t like about Corvo is that he seemed so easy to bend and yet so hard to control. You could order a dog, you could teach it to hunt, you could make it love you and give it orders but the truth of the matter was they kept sending Corvo out for blood and he comes back with so much more.

It wasn’t that he’d lost any control. He wasn’t a fucking animal. He wasn’t usurping them or defying them. It was a fucking statement, and none of them had an answer.

Not yet.

Teague got up from where he was sitting, surprised at how light his chest felt despite the weight he now carried under his jacket. He wished he could stop thinking about the damn thing.

He went to the dirty window and he touched it with both hands, gloves and all. They left smudges in the dirty windows, and he was sure someone would notice. Havelock, probably, or one of the servants, and they’d wonder what it was he was doing when he left finger prints all over the dirty window. He wondered why they had let it get that dirty in the first place, and he realized that sometimes it was all they could do to sweep the bar and make tea for Emily and wait for Corvo to come home.

“Teague,” Teague hadn’t heard Havelock enter, and for a heart-stopping moment he wondered if he’d left the door open. If Walter or one of the women servants had heard, if Treavor had gone back to his room to wet his throat and caught Teague’s impromptu confessional. No, he was sure he’d closed it, locked it even, but this was Havelock’s room and the Admiral had the key.

“Corvo must be arriving at the Boyle estate by now,” Havelock continued, now that the overseer was facing him, wondering if the admiral could tell he was holding his hand over his breast where the recording was.

“So by tomorrow morning, we’ll know if it’s been done,” they always spoke of it like this, in abstract terms, as if the body count didn’t grow higher and higher each day – Dunwall was making a mockery of the Flooded District.

“By tomorrow morning, Corvo Attano will be riding in here on a shit little boat. We’ll know far sooner than that if Boyle blood has been spilt,” Havelock walked into the room and shut the door behind them, the constant glow of the lamp casting deep shadows across his face and catching his collar, throwing his throat into darkness. Teague’s eyes never left him.

“So we kill him tomorrow, then,” Teague said gravely. He managed to remove his hand from his chest, forcing it to his side and moving his fingers, slowly rubbing them together as if grinding powder. Havelock looked away, to the medals hanging on the wall, illuminated by the old brass lamp.

“After the Lord Regent has been dealt with, we will have no more use for Corvo,” he said it loudly, making Teague flinch, but he easily recomposed himself once it had been spoken. “The boatman will do it. Everything is prepared. Emily will take the throne, and her mother’s murderer will have been brought to justice. He’s a liability.”

Well, that’s one way to put it. Teague said nothing, thinking of the way Corvo’s mask fit so close to his face, molding flesh with steel – the only exposed part of him his hands, and that mark, but Teague wasn’t going to think about that now.

_Will the Void take a man like Corvo? Was that where he was always meant to be?_

“Is something bothering you, Teague?” Havelock was staring right at him, now, tiny, beady eyes boring directly into his skull. Teague’s jaw twitched, his face giving away nothing.

“Nothing,” he said with practiced ease. “I just feel heavy with the weight of all we have accomplished, once we are done here.”

Lying tongues didn’t break overseers. They made them. Havelock didn’t seem to be aware of this, so he turned back to the frame on the wall – and Teague saw something disturbing flash in the admiral’s eyes, reflected in the polished glass.

“We have moved mountains in a matter of days,” he went on. “We’ve slain leviathans. We’ve done terrible things for the good of an empire, Teague. It should feel heavy. Our hands have martyr’s blood on them.”

Whose hands? Teague asked silently, his still fidgeting in his gloves. He didn’t make a sound, not while Havelock turned and started to pace the room, like an impatient beast waiting for something, anything from his companion.

“He has to die, Teague,” he said abruptly, turning back to the overseer. Teague slowly met his gaze with unchallenging eyes, accepting and fidgeting and relaxing his shoulders. He could feel the recording burning a hole in his jacket, screaming stricture at him.

“I know.”

“You see what he’s done to them. I do not regret their deaths, but he’s not a man fit for human company anymore. What would he become once this is all done? There’s no room for murderers in the Dunwall we will build.”

The walls they were building were crumbling twice as fast, but they kept at it, stone and cement and barb wire. They didn’t know who they were trying to keep out.

“You do agree with me, don’t you?” Havelock asked. Teague tilted his head.

“Agree with you on what?”

“That this is the right thing. That Corvo has to die,” Havelock’s voice dropped low, as if he were afraid of someone hearing. Cecelia was still talking to herself in the other room.

“Of what value are the hands that steal and kill and destroy?” Teague murmured in reply, and Havelock barked a sharp, almost strained laugh.

“Trust a man like you to explain it that way,” for the first time all night, he clapped a hand on Teague’s shoulders, and Teague had to stop himself from physically recoiling. Havelock kept his hand there for a moment before withdrawing it, ambling to his drunk, seeming to be in better spirits now that the more strained part of the conversation was over.

He bent down to unlock it, furrowing his brow as if confused for a moment, then pulling out a bottle of Serkonan wine and raising it to show Teague.

“It’s our damned right to celebrate if we’re this close to the light at the end,” Havelock said, straightening up and producing two glasses from the same trunk; fine crystal wine glasses, obviously not taken from the Hound Pits, but brought in from somewhere different. He set them down on the desk, and the gleamed foreign in the lamplight.

“And you’re not inviting Treavor?” Teague said, his mouth twisting into a wry grin. Havelock barked another laugh as he uncorked the bottle with a small knife, pouring generous helpings into each of the glasses and handing one to Teague.

“He’s drank all of his own wine and then some, already,” Havelock said, putting the glass to his face and inhaling. “Drunk bastard’s already asleep. Walter put him to bed.”

Teague didn’t let his eyes leave Havelock as he put the wine to his lips, drinking deeply and silently, smiling once he was done and watching Havelock wipe his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Are you staying here, tonight, or will you sleep in the servant’s quarters again?” Havelock put forward, and Teague tightened his grip on the wine glass before forcing himself to relax.

A small smile played on his lips, and he shrugged, forcing down the bile in his throat as he drank from his glass once more. When he made his way to the bathroom later that night, puking in the toilet, he wondered briefly if Havelock had poisoned him as they planned to poison Corvo.

But no, he was fine, and he drank more, his thirst unquenchable – as was his hunger.

Teague spent far longer than he’d intended to in Havelock’s room the night before; they finished the bottle and started a second before the night was done, and it was only when Teague insisted he wanted to be rested before he Corvo returned that he could escape.

He lay awake for hours after that, aware of the breathing of the servants around him, listening to the water lapping at their back door. He imagined he was on a great ship, a tiny person tossed about on a treacherous sea, and when he tried to picture a merciful god he could not find one. That night, he dreamed of Corvo Attano with black eyes and blueish skin that burst into rats when Teague tried to touch it.

He woke up with a dry mouth and needing to pee desperately; he stumbled to the bathroom and relieved himself first thing, tilting his head back to stare at the place where the walls and the ceiling met. He nearly missed the damn toilet when the loudspeaker outside crackled to life, rattling the windows and shutters of the building. Teague swore, listening carefully to the announcement.

“ _Attention Dunwall Citizens: the streets adjacent to Boyle Manor remain off limits pending an ongoing investigation.”_

So it was done.

Upon washing his face and dressing himself, Teague left the upstairs rooms to return to the lower Hound Pits; downstairs, Callista and Emily were having their breakfast; fruit and sausage piled onto a plate that the little empress was digging heavily into.

“What’s that you’re drawing, Emily?” Teague’s head shurt and he felt a little dizzy, but he still walked over to her table and stood over the little empress-to-be, peering down at the stack of papers she kept close at hand. He couldn’t tell what the top one was – the page was almost entirely coloured in, mostly greys and blacks with a few gold strands, a colour scheme that tugged at his mind. He knew he’d seen it before, but he couldn’t place where.

Emily looked up at him with wide, curious eyes, although they almost screamed mistrust – a guarded child, hard to read, but easy to tell that not everything was alright. He couldn’t hold her gaze for very long, and instead turned his face to the sausage slain on her plate.

“It’s a gift for Corvo,” she said, the lightness of her tone contradicting the darkness in her eyes. Teague was almost immediately assaulted by visions of Corvo, perched by the little girl’s bed well into the night, a hand on her head as he chased away her nightmares.

“I’m sure he’ll love it,” Teague murmured, and it was the sound of heavy footfalls that interrupted them. Teague turned to the stairwell, and Havelock entered the room rubbing his jaw – his eyes ringed with exhaustion and his uniform buttoned wrong.

“Martin!” He barked, making both Callista and Emily jump in their seats. The admiral stopped in his tracks when he realized who was there, and almost immediately straightened himself out, standing at attention in front of the young miss Emily.

“I’m sorry, your highness,” he said, his voice smooth and apologetic, and Emily didn’t miss a beat as she sat up straight herself, her ankles crossed as she tilted her head towards the admiral.

“It’s fine,” she replied equally as smooth. “If you need Overseer Martin for any reason, he’s all yours. He was just visiting us at breakfast.”

Havelock looked at the little girl as if he didn’t quite know what to make of her at first, and he was the first to break eye contact after a couple moments.

“Have you eaten, Martin?” He asked, and Teague shook his head.

“But it doesn’t matter,” the overseer said smoothly. “If you need me, I’ll just grab this –“ he reached over, snagging a pear from the plate in between Emily and Callista – “And we can go.”

Havelock nodded quietly, then turned and gave a short bow to miss Emily and her tutor, bringing up the rear behind Teague as they left the main room of the Hound Pits. He closed the door behind them, crowding them in to the cramped little stairwell, and they ascended the stairs together, Teague munching on his pear.

Havelock brought them back to his quarters, once again shutting the door behind them and locking it solemnly.

“No doubt you’ve heard the announcements,” he began, and Teague tossed the pear core into a wastebasket beside the desk. Havelock had lain a map of Dunwall tower across it, their old wineglasses placed on either end to keep the thing unrolled.

“I have. So our man has done it,” Teague replied, walking over to peer over the map.

“Indeed he has,” Havelock replied gravely. “And he should be back any time now.”

“Assuming he made it out of the area.”

“He did,” Havelock said with forceful certainty. “Of course he did.”

Teague didn’t reply after that, and they sat in silence. Havelock had dragged him up here for a reason, and it wasn’t to converse; they were the somber welcoming party, they would be reading Corvo his last orders.

It was too early for this. Teague’s head still hurt, and the pear had done little to quench his thirst. He resisted the urge to set his head down on the table, instead pouring over the map but not really taking it in, just eyeing the same rooms over and over and over. He felt like he was looking at a dollhouse, a joke. Here is where the little Lord Regent doll took his tea, here is where he planned his battles, here is where he fucked his maids, here he read his strictures –

“He’s here,” Havelock’s voice broke through his thoughts, and Teague raised his tired eyes to the door. There was a click of the door unlocking, and the handle turned, and the door pushed open.

His gaze wandered to the mark on Corvo’s hand before he could take in any other part of him, and he locked his eyes on it, unable to see anything else. It was as stark and black as the day it had appeared on him, and Teague didn’t want to look away.

Corvo had removed his mask already, so there was no reason for Teague to look at his face just yet. His face was stony and unclear – not cold, not quite that, but something far more disturbing that set Teague shaking in his boots. Finally, Teague tore his gaze away, looked back to the map and didn’t move. Here is where the Lord Regent tortures his prisoners. Here is where he killed the empress.

“Corvo, the time has come,” Havelock started again with another one of his sermons, making Teague grit his teeth and twitch his fingers against the map, not yet looking up. “Everything we have done, everything _you_ have done, has served to make this moment possible.” Havelock spoke to the assassin as if smoothing feathers before they could be rustled, his tongue weaving lies around their comradery. Corvo did not speak.

“The Lord Regent is exposed, Corvo,” Teague felt himself talking mechanically, practiced. Just like how he felt when he was actually preaching. “Vulnerable. And now everything is in place to strike at him. We’re one step from the throne.” He pushed himself back from the table, turning his gaze to meet the assassin’s eyes, and it took all his power not to fall to his knees.

There was blood on his hands, on his marked hand. God – god.

“One man. One… beating heart,” Havelock took over with a forced intimacy, and when he said the word ‘heart’, Corvo seemed to shift and flinch all at once. He stared at Havelock with a strange distrust when the admiral spoke to him, only to relax seconds later as Havelock continued. “That is… all that is left of the forces that brought this city to the brink of ruin.”

God, Teague could see so much going on in Corvo’s eyes, so much emotion and disgusting and just overwhelming power. Teague couldn’t stop his fingers from fidgeting madly at his side. _What do you see, masked one? What do you know that we do not?_

“It is simple, but it will be far from easy,” both Havelock and Corvo turned to Teague as he stepped forward, offering his voice, but his gaze was meant only for Corvo. “The Lord Regent’s paranoia has reached an all-time high. He has lost the support of the Overseers, the Parliament, his financial base, and he’s lost Sokolov, who made his security technology. So at Dunwall Tower he has consolidated every remaining loyal man around him.” Havelock’s eyes remained trained on the overseer until he finished talking. The admiral then turned back to Corvo, but Corvo did not look away from Teague.

“He knows something is coming,” Havelock, obviously irritated that Corvo wasn’t looking, pushed on. “He knows _you_ are coming. And everything depends on him being correct. Piero will help you prepare, and Samuel will take you close to the tower, near the water lock. Last time you were there was the horrible day all of this started.”

God, it made Teague want to puke – so obviously playing on the assassin’s emotions, his lost empress, as if toying with his heartstrings would make him dance like a puppet. It gave Teague sick satisfaction to know that he knew that they didn’t have that control over Corvo Attano.

“Now you will go there and end it. Good luck, Corvo,” Havelock said his last words with a resounding punch, but Corvo only turned tired eyes to the admiral.

“I have already been to see Piero,” he said, his voice tired and bored. “I saw him right after I saw Emily. I saw Emily the minute I got here.”

He spoke with a slow purpose, as if trying to get something through their heads. Havelock, oblivious, straightened himself up, clearing his throat.

“Then you should leave as-“

“I will leave as soon as I am ready,” the drop in Corvo’s voice took Teague by surprise and sent his tummy directly to his boots. God.

“I’m going back to my room for now,” Corvo’s voice was still calm and demanding, but seemed to have lost something. He looked at Teague one last time, turning like a ghost and floating back into the hallway, his boots falling heavy with each step.

Havelock seemed stunned for a moment, but he didn’t have anything to say. Teague looked to him, then the empty space in the door, where Corvo and his eyes and his mark had burned their place into the fabric of time. Teague closed his eyes, then opened him, then made to follow him.

“Teague –“ Havelock began, but Teague raised his hand to stop him.

“I’m going to see Corvo,” he said, his voice echoing in his own ears. Havelock didn’t say anything as Teague rounded the corner and went up the stairs, following the assassin into his domain. He walked without purpose, almost as if he wasn’t sure where he was going, but his feet needed to move – they needed to follow Corvo.

It was only when he got to the top floor that Teague slowed, listening to Corvo moving restlessly within. To his left, he could see out the open window, across the beams that had been laid to the roof of Piero’s building, a safe walkway for Emily should she need her Royal Protector for any reason.

He did not belong here. He felt as though he were trespassing, as this was not his roost, not his room. This place was for Corvo and it was for Emily, and it was something he could not understand.

The movements inside the other room ceased, and without a single sound Corvo appeared in the doorway before him, almost as if a shadow. Teague jumped out of his skin, wondering if those whispers he’d heard had been his imagination.

“I will leave for Dunwall Tower before nightfall,” Corvo said, and it took Teague a moment to recover.

“A man of theatrics, are you?” He said, feeling brave. “Want to catch him at night, like a shadow in his dreams? You’ll have him shitting himself before he’s fully dead, Corvo.”

Corvo didn’t seem fully amused by Teague’s guarded playfulness, and turned back into his room. It only took Teague a moment to decide to follow him, feeling much like a lamb walking into the den of a lion, if that lion was a crow and the lamb was a slick, slippery snake.

“Can I ask why you don’t want to go right away?” Teague asked, his curiosity getting the better of him. “I thought you’d be salivating to get a blade into the Regent as soon as possible.”

Corvo turned back to look at him, and there was something in his face that Teague really didn’t like. The overseer wondered vaguely if he might be in danger, but he figured there wasn’t a time during this whole conspiracy where he wasn’t.

“I went to see Emily,” Corvo said finally, after a few moments.

“…Emily?” Teague said, not quite understanding.

“When I got back. I always go see her first thing, I went to her room, but she wasn’t there.”

“I think she’s downstairs, with Callista – “

“She is now. I found her hiding down by the beach. She was trying to avoid studying languages,” Corvo paused, and Teague felt like the other man was more troubled by this than he should be.

“Well, she is just a child,” he began, but suddenly Corvo slammed his hand into a wooden post, and the whole room shook.

“That’s the fucking _point_!” He snapped, and Teague froze, unsure of what to do.

“She’s just a fucking child, Martin,” he said through clenched teeth, and all Teague did was nod because that’s all he understood to do. “Just a fucking child and now look what they did to her!” He yelled.

Corvo spun around with unnerving speed and flung his hand out as if to strike an unseen man, and Teague was pushed off balance by a gust of wind that shook the whole room – dust falling from the ceiling beams and empty whiskey bottles shattering against the wall, making his heart leap into his throat as he watched Corvo stand hunched and visibly shaking, the mark on his left hand pulsing and slowly fading away.

“They kept her in the _fucking_ brothel,” Corvo’s voice was even and low, but his body betrayed him, fingers twitching with every word, and he turned to Teague, shaking quietly while he spoke. “They let her sit there while they bargained for sex and walked around naked, grown fucking men exposing themselves to a little girl –“

Teague wanted to tell Corvo to calm down, to try and talk him out of breaking the windows or something more irreplaceable – like bones – but Corvo was across the room and then he reached out his arm and he was right fucking next to Teague, breathing on him and looking him dead in the eyes.

Teague felt his mouth go dry and his heart swapped places with his liver. Corvo grabbed him by the front of his jacket, not yet an act of violence, but of rage.

“They killed her mother,” he choked, and Teague couldn’t tell if he was near crying or overcome by a relentless grief. “And they treated her like – like – “

“Like a prisoner?” Teague asked, tiptoeing dangerously close to the edge. Corvo inhaled.

“She’s only a _girl_ ,” he said, his gaze begging Teague to understand.

Teague was many things, but he was not a father, and he was not Corvo. He didn’t know why he had come here, why he had followed the assassin to his roost, but now he was staring into the eyes of someone he could not dare to understand. But god, he wanted to _so badly_.

“If there is anyone in this building who can recover, it’s her,” he said, his attempts to recover not making it worse, but not making it better, either.

It hit him then that maybe there was no way to make it better. That Corvo– as strange a being as he was, as frightening and as dreadful, he was a human being, and he had seen death, and he had Emily to protect and he had not saved her mother. He was carrying a burden Teague couldn’t understand, and the mark on his hand was only the beginning of it.

There was pain in his face, Teague could see it now. Pain and power and an anger so raw that it brought Teague to his knees – metaphorically, as Corvo was still holding him by the collar, keeping him steady. Corvo was haunted and now he hunted, and part of Teague wondered if he could really blame him.

No wonder the Outsider had come for this man. He was filled with an emptiness that screamed for the void and all its magic.

“Corvo,” Teague said, his voice sounding rough to his own ears. “Corvo, I want you to kiss me.”

Corvo went from agony to astonishment, and he lost his grip on Teague, the other man crumpling to the floor. Teague looked up at him from where he now knelt, his soul feeling as bare and naked as he had been the day he was bore.

“Corvo, please,” he said, and then he felt Corvo’s hands wrap around his throat.

Corvo fell to his knees, pushing Teague onto the floor and straddling him. He sat down on top of him, grinding himself down and making Teague gasp. One of Corvo’s hands stayed at his throat, but the other went to cover his mouth, and Teague sucked a bit on the pads of his fingers, looking up at Corvo with an open expression.

Corvo seemed to just be going off what he knew of Teague and what he thought Teague would like; he wasn’t wrong, either, and Teague didn’t want to move lest he relieve any of the pressure on his groin.

Corvo removed his hand from Teague's mouth and leaned down to kiss him. His lips were rough and chapped but he knew what to do with them, and Teague greatly appreciated Corvo's precise knowledge of his own body. They made short work of Teague's mouth, and with his hand still around Teague's neck, moved to his jaw and chin, scraping his teeth across the skin but not marking him, just threatening to.

He removed his hand briefly to bite on his neck, to assure Teague that he would indeed rip out his throat with them if he wanted to, then recovered the faint teeth marks with his palm, kissing back up his jaw to his cheek to his ear, kissing softly on the shell of it.

Then he sat up, running his marked hand across Teague's face, a small smile playing on his lips while his eyes stayed sad, stayed quiet. Then, he brought both hands to Teague's neck, and wrapping them around it, began to really choke him.

Teague stayed calm for a minute, struggling for air only with his lungs, but then it was getting harder to breathe, and his heart was speeding up a little, the bigger man pressing down on him with deliberate force. He could feel a faint, burning glow against the skin on his neck – and he realized that Corvo's marked hand was glowing bright, burning hot, hot enough that Teague could feel it without the back of his hand actually touching his skin.

“You’ve seen him, haven’t you?” Teague choked out, feeling Corvo’s bare hands on his skin, his throat struggling to let enough air through, his heart battering on his rib cage like a fucking animal. “He came to you, Corvo, to _you_ , of all fucking people – no, it’s –“ he gasped, barely able to breathe and talk at the same time, but he kept breathing, kept railing on. Corvo didn’t loosen his grip nor did he move from his spot on top of Teague, and for how naked his face was he wore a mask that screamed of control.

Corvo was in control, and Teague was bargaining for his life. No. Something more important than that.

“He marked you, the black-eyed bastard. He tried to fucking control you, didn’t he?” For the first time, Corvo’s eyes flickered something, and he tightened his grip. Teague was running out of time.

“No, no, it wasn’t that,” Teague’s mind was racing, and his tongue felt too heavy, his mind clouded by the desire to have Corvo fuck him until he puked. “He didn’t try to control you. He watched you. He let you become what you always were. An –“ not an animal, not a storm, not – “like the ocean. Like the fucking sea. He sees beasts in you with more depth than we ever possibly could, and you still have more to give. More to show him.”

Teague wasn’t sure how he’d managed to choke that much out while Corvo was doing a very good job of choking him out, but suddenly the pressure on his neck was gone and he gasped for air, head thudding back against the floor.

“He didn’t just give you power,” he gasped. “He gave you what you already had.”

“He didn’t give me these for myself,” it was the first time in a long time Corvo had spoke, and his voice sent Teague’s head spinning deliciously. Corvo held up his marked fist, clenched hard, and Teague wondered for a moment if Corvo would strike him. “He marked me for her. Everything I do, I’ve done it for her.”

For a minute, Teague wondered if he meant Jessamine, but then he realized that’s not what Corvo was talking about.

“Emily,” he whispered, almost in awe. Corvo’s face didn’t change.

Slowly, the overseer reached up with shaking hands – pulling his gloves off of them, his palms sweating, and letting them drop to the floor. Then, he took his hands, his dirty, dirty hands, and he wrapped them around Corvo’s fist, tugging it down to meet his lips.

He kissed Corvo’s mark, feeling electricity course through his body from his lips down to his toes. Now he felt raw, he felt bare, and he had to close his eyes and grip Corvo tight to keep his arms from shaking.

“Do you want me to fuck you?”

Corvo’s eyes never left Teague’s face, and Teague opened his own to matched his gaze. God, it felt so good to be this close to ruin, this far from redemption.

“Corvo Attano,” his words came out shaky and he could still feel the burn of Corvo’s marked hand on his lips, and he wondered if it’d scar. Corvo did him the decency of keeping eye contact while the Overseer tried to catch his breath, and Teague lifted his shaking hands to rest them on Corvo’s hips, digging into fold and fabric to get a taste of the flesh underneath.

“I want you to fuck me senseless.”

Corvo let out a long, slow breath, and he tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling. Teague knew he wasn’t really looking at the wood beams, but a part of him still shook at the thought that Corvo could see something he couldn’t – that Corvo knew how to find places in this world between cracks in wood and just outside the light of a lantern that would bring Teague to his knees. Corvo must walk like a king in places like those.

No. No, that was wrong. Wherever Corvo walked, he made it fit for royalty, but not himself – he laid the path for lady Emily.

“As you wish,” he said, his words punching Teague in the throat.

Corvo got off of him, and Teague almost screamed from the lack of pressure. He lay against the dirty floor, sweat streaking his face and hair, watching as Corvo stood slowly and began to unbuckle his belt, letting the strap slide off his shoulders and then come undone around his hips, falling to the floor with a resounding thud. His jacket was next to go, and Teague realized he was still struggling to breathe, making eye contact with the assassin the whole time as he stripped down to nothing, standing naked and exposed over top of the overseer and still so much more in control than Teague could ever dream of being.

Corvo looked strange like this, completely naked and too human for Teague to make sense of it. His skin was marked, not just by the Outsider – by blade and bullet, wind and sea. He looked strong, still attached to his youth, yet bore the wounds of an old warship – reliable, strong, steady.

“Corvo,” Teague whispered again, and Corvo knelt over him, his hand coming to rest gently on Teague’s crotch, making his legs twitch.

“Quiet,” he said. “They’ll hear you.”

Teague didn’t know what Corvo thought was humanly fucking possible, but it sure wasn’t _being quiet_ while this was going on right in front of him. Teague’s legs shook every time Corvo touched him, careful and controlled, and it nearly killed Teague to realize that Corvo was rubbing him with his marked hand.

Corvo reached behind him, pulling his blade out from his discarded belt. Teague inhaled sharply, opening his mouth as if to say something, but Corvo flicked it open – the metal making a horrific clicking sound as it locked into place.

“Hands above your head,” Corvo said quietly, and Teague did exactly as he was told. In one swift movement, he drove the blade directly between Teague’s wrists, through his sleeves and pinned his hands to the ground.

Teague would tug, and he could probably rip free, but there was no fun in that. If he ripped his sleeves, he wouldn’t be able to appreciate the slits for years to come, to wear them openly and proud as the High Overseer while knowing the dirty secret behind how they got there.

Corvo’s hands on his stomach brought him out of his daydream and back to the present. Teague inhaled as Corvo ran them down his stomach, across his hips and then moved to his inner thighs, rubbing down then back up again to rest on the top of his pants.

Corvo didn’t even make a show of it when he started to unbuckle Teague’s pants, and Teague had to force himself to stay calm as the assassin dragged them down off his hips, pulling them down just enough to pull Teague’s cock out of his underwear.

Corvo stroked Teague with one hand, a gentle, repetitive motion, but he seemed satisfied with the other man's arousal already. He ran his tongue across his teeth, looking down at Teague hungrily.

“You stay here,” he said, and Teague wanted to say _as if I could go_ anywhere, and then he realized it was more a threat than an order.

Corvo stood for a moment and walked to his cot, lifting the mattress and letting it drop, returning with a small vial. He threw a leg over Teague again, settling himself comfortably on top of his thighs, and after a minute of contemplation reached forward to remove the sword he'd driven into the floor. Teague let his arms relax, but didn't move them, not even when Corvo uncorked the vial and brought it to Teague's nose, letting him smell it. It smelled faintly of fish, and Teague understood exactly what Corvo was doing.

Corvo took the vial in his hand, tipping it over to pour the contents out over his fingers. He let it dribble down off of them, onto the front of Teague’s shirt, making a mess of the fabric.

“Where did you get that stuff?” Teague asked, and Corvo smiled a little for the first time that day.

“Piero keeps bringing in shipments. Says they’re for his equipment,” he said, lifting himself up by his knees, his hand twisting underneath him. Martin kept his eyes glued to Corvo's face, not trusting himself to look at what Corvo's hands were doing.

"Are you afraid?"

Corvo's voice seemed disjointed from the way his lips were moving, and it took Martin a few seconds to respond.

"Afraid of what? Fucking you?"

"No. Are you afraid of me?" Corvo said, his voice even and low, as he sank down onto Martin's cock.

Teague hissed through his teeth, never breaking eye contact with the assassin, but didn't miss his chance to grab Corvo by the waist and dig his nails into the skin there.

He kept them short, and blunt, and they couldn't break skin – he couldn't mark Corvo like he wanted to. Couldn't leave his mark like the void had.

“I'm not afraid of you,” Teague grunted soft, shaking at the way Corvo rolled his hips on his cock. Fucking god.

“You're not afraid of what I can do?” Corvo asked again, taking one of his hands off Teague's stomach to clench his fist, showing the glowing mark etched into his skin. Teague dug his nails in harder, too blunt, too useless.

“No.”

“You were never horrified by it, were you?” Corvo was hot and tight and fucked himself on Teague's cock like Teague wasn't even there, didn't even matter. He spoke like Teague was kneeling, like Teague had a gun to his head. “It never bothered you what I am.”

Teague locked eyes with Corvo, dragging his nails down his hips and thighs, raising long, red marks around his skin.

“I don't care what you had to become to protect Em-”

Corvo's hands slid up Teague and wrapped around his throat, pressing down hard and cutting him off as he used his knees to hold himself up as he rode Teague's cock. Teague let out a gargle, staring directly up into those turbulent, sea-grey eyes.

“I became?” Corvo said, his voice almost mocking. “I never became anything except what I always was.”

Teague couldn't reply, his tongue flopping uselessly in his mouth, and Corvo used his body like a ship – rocking on him, closing his eyes and biting his own lip, hands never leaving Teague's neck the whole time. Teague could only just get enough air in; Corvo wasn't trying to choke him out, just trying to make a point. Corvo had made his point and Teague submit to the assassin completely, understanding what was going on between them.

This is what Teague got for his torn mind – for his desire for Corvo, and his desire to see Corvo dead, as Havelock did. No, not even that. Havelock's need was born and festering on fear, and Teague just know he couldn't live in a world with someone like that.

The Outsider, the void, the plague, he could handle that. He didn't know how to exist at the same time as Corvo, to justify that to himself. Not that he'd let this happen, or let Corvo become, but that he hadn't done anything to stop it. And now he didn't want to.

And it wasn't about the sex, not about the way Corvo had his hands on Teague's neck as a fierce reminder and was riding him to shame; it was the fact that Teague was at once humbled and in worship, maybe for the first time. He wanted to follow Corvo's stricture, but he wasn't sure he could handle that.

“Corvo - “ He choked out, and the hands came off, and Corvo was sitting up straight, and Corvo was grinding down on him and making Teague's mouth hang open, trails of drool coming out the side of it against his will. Corvo was jerking himself off now, one hand back on Teague's thigh to steady himself, chin tucked in neatly against his chest.

“Corvo, please,” Teague didn't beg. He didn't fucking beg, but he was begging now, and he wasn't even sure what for. Corvo looked up briefly at him, his eyes not glazed but looking somewhere else, like his whole world was full of experiences Teague couldn't possibly hope to understand.

Corvo was sank all the way down on him now, his thighs shaking every time he moved his hand, and Teague reached up to run his hands over Corvo's shivering legs again, digging his nails into him to ground the assassin, to remind him where he was and who he was with. Corvo let out a low growl, but he didn't push him away.

“I've wanted you like this since you came to me in the stocks, in that mask,” Teague said with a shiver. “I wanted you like I've never wanted before. You're more than power or flesh or coin or-” but Teague felt dirty bringing dirty things into this, when this man was power and flesh and the sea.

Corvo's hand had moved off of Teague's thigh now, and was curled close to his own chest, half-open as if holding something to his breast. Teague didn't understand, couldn't understand, but he didn't want to. He just watched and held on to Corvo for his life as Corvo tilted his head back, his legs shaking and giving way so he went limp on top of Teague, coming across the overseer's stomach and jacket.

Corvo pulled off of Teague and stumbled to his feet, staring down at the overseer with a look of half-shock on his face, as if he hadn't planned for that to happen. Teague stared back at him with equal confusion for a moment, and then Corvo righted himself, hand still clutched to his chest before letting it hang by his side, standing naked and sweating above Teague.

He didn't say a word, but turned with awkward, jerky movements, picking up his jacket and pants and vest off the floor, setting about the arduous task of re-clothing himself. Teague didn't move or make to help him, just stared at the ceiling with dust in his hair and a mess across his clothes, just trying to forget that he had to force himself to breathe.

Corvo dressed himself and ran a hand through his hair, tilting his head to the ceiling as if in silent prayer, his eyes closed. Teague watched him much in the same way.

Finally, Corvo turned to the overseer and took a step toward him. He raised his marked hand to Teague's cheek, brushing the back of it across his skin and leaning down, pressing a chaste and tired kiss against his lips and letting it ghost to the overseer's ear.

“Thank you,” was all he said simply. “Watch out for Emily while I'm gone, won't you?”

He stood, then, and stepped over Teague with quiet ease, each step he had growing less and less tired, and as he left the room Teague was gripped with a sudden fear that he was a passing apparition, that Corvo would not exist once he left his seat.

Teague stumbled out of the loft and into the small room adjacent to the stairwell. Pulling his pants back up, he tripped to the open window just in time. He stopped to watch Corvo go running across the ramp to the top of Piero's workshop, heard the faint sound of Piero's startled yell from down below. Teague almost collapsed in a tired laugh, because Corvo had been doing this for days now, and Piero was still shocked every time he heard the thunder of boots on his roof. Corvo reached the end of the roof, and took one massive leap; his form silhouetted against the setting sun.

For a minute it looked as if he might be leaping into the river, but Teague barely caught the quick raise of his fist, the other curling in against his chest again, and in the blink of an eye Corvo landed in front of Samuel and his boat, and the boatman didn't even flinch. Teague slumped, tired, and victorious, his vision swimming a little as he watched Corvo board the boat to cross the river, and Teague knew, with relaxed ease, that after tonight, it would be over. Corvo would take a different path, and Teague would take the storm to come.

 

**Author's Note:**

> me @ all of you: "Restrict the Wanton Flesh. Truly, there is no quicker means by which a life can be upheaved and sifted than by the depredations of uncontrolled desire. Only sorrow is born, only misery is multiplied; within these things, the Outsider dwells."


End file.
